The Last Word (35 page)

“Ruth,” Maggie said, like some cowboy in a western about to challenge another cowboy
to a duel. “A word, please.”

The corridor was narrow, which added to the whole duel element.

“If you ever try to give my daughter a princess dress again, I’ll rip it into shreds
before it’s even out of the box. And if you ever use the word
diet
in front of her, I’ll sew those shreds together and strangle you with them.”

Grammy’s body clenched into a sinewy statue, and she clutched her purse to her chest
in her veiny claws.

“How dare you talk to me like that. She’s my great-granddaughter.”

“
And my daughter
. I win. Back off, old lady. You do not want to mess with me.”

If Maggie had stormed off right then and there, it would have been an exquisite exit.
Instead, she pulled a cookie out of her pocket, took a giant bite, chomped away, and
said with a mouthful, “Izzy, I’ll see you at home.”

Then she stormed off.

Alas, the perfect moment came just seconds later, a moment that would have made Maggie
so very proud.

Sydney waved her chopstick wand in front of Grammy Spellman and said, “Time out, Grammy.”

•  •  •

Sydney and I returned to the hospital room, where my father and Slayter were catching
up on the last several months, having not met.

“I need to take Banana home. Is everybody good here?”

Dad seemed to be having a good few hours, and he and Slayter said they had many things
to discuss. I wanted particulars, but Sydney started whispering, “No Izzy,” in my
ear, which was incredibly distracting, so I left the two men to their devices and
hoped that not too much note-sharing would take place.

•  •  •

There aren’t many places you can take a thirty-pound dictator carrying a sharp stick.
I decided to bring my niece home so she could rule her kingdom of stuffed animals
and leave the rest of the universe alone. As Princess Banana banished her bunny to
the gallows, I phoned Agent Bledsoe, asked if he’d received my paperwork, and pled
my case. Then I e-mailed him my supporting documentation and told him how to contact
Evelyn Glade and Rufus Harding. Bledsoe sounded skeptical, but evidence doesn’t lie.
With
the threat of a felony conviction off my shoulders, I celebrated with a glass of fancy
bourbon and a bowl of Goldfish and watched several episodes of
Phineas and Ferb
in a row.

There was a knock at the door. I looked through the peephole and saw Max Klein. Since
I’d never seen Max without Claire, my gut told me not to take any chances. I peered
through the window and, as predicted, Claire was standing to the right of her father.
There wasn’t a chance in hell I was falling for this scam again.

Max knocked more vigorously on the door. He shouted hello. It’s very likely he saw
me look through the window. In fact, it’s more than likely; we made eye contact.

Princess Banana then went to the window and waved at her friend. She tried to open
the door, but the dead bolt foiled her.

“No one is home,” I said through the door. Yes, it’s a ridiculous thing to say, but
the essence of the message is generally heard.

“Isabel, open the door,” Max said.

“Time out,” the little tyrant said.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” I said, to both Sydney and Max.

There was a lot of noise coming out of the children. Eventually the home line rang.
I picked up.

“Hello,” I said, trying to disguise my voice.

“Isabel, it’s Max. Is there a problem?”

Clearly I didn’t disguise it well enough.

“Listen, I didn’t want the one kid today; there’s no way in hell that I’m taking two.
If you want to swap, I might go for
that
, but I’m not getting suckered into watching two children for the price of zero.”

“Take a deep breath,” Max said.

Apparently Max couldn’t hear the deep breath on the other end of the line, so he repeated
his imperative.

“I want to hear you take a deep breath.”

I inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. “Done.”

“Listen to me carefully. I’ve come to take a child away, not add one. If you do the
math, that leaves you with
zero
children.”

“I like that math, but how do I know I can trust you?”

“Frankly, I don’t want to leave my child alone with you.”

He made an excellent point. I opened the door.

“Nice to see you, Max.”

“No snitch,” Claire said when she saw me, and then she did the oddest thing. She gave
me a hug, or, more specifically, she gave my thighs a hug, because of our height differential,
not because my thighs deserve a hug. They most certainly do not.

“Who wants a juice box and Goldfish?” I asked, trying to be hospitable.

•  •  •

Princess Banana in her fancy new gown asked Claire if she wanted to play a game. Claire
agreed, not realizing that the game in no way resembled a game and involved doing
whatever Sydney wanted Claire to do. They sat at the tea table and Sydney told Claire
she had to sip tea exactly like she did. Claire ignored her and began playing with
one of the dolls. Sydney told Claire that she was being rude. Claire said, “Shhh,”
which was a lovely sound. Sydney clanked some silverware angrily and told Claire that
a guest was supposed to be polite.

Claire found a spot on the floor and began playing with the doll she came in with.

When Banana realized that Claire was not going to rejoin her for tea, she crawled
onto the floor and took the doll away from Claire.

“That’s my doll,” Sydney said.

Claire snatched it right back and said, “No, it’s
mine
.”

Max pumped his fist into the air in victory; even I have to admit Claire was pretty
badass in that moment.

“Congratulations,” I said.

Princess Sydney then said, “Time out.”

I stormed over to the bossy pink fluffball and said, “No. Time out for you.”

To David and Maggie’s credit, time-outs were in rotation enough that Sydney regally
walked over to the pink chair in the corner of the room, took a dignified seat, and
sat in silence. I turned to Max.

“Can Claire watch TV?”

“Age appropriate,” Max said.

“So,
Breaking Bad
is out?”

Max rolled his eyes. Since Claire and I have similar tastes in animated entertainment,
I turned on the
Phineas
episode I had been watching earlier.

After dethroning the princess, I decided I deserved another drink. I poured a glass
and offered one to my guest. Max, not Claire.

“Drink, Max?”

“Too early for bourbon.”

“Juice box?”

“Beer,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

We sat at the kitchen table, keeping an eye on the quiet kingdom.

“How’s your dad?” Max asked.

“I really don’t know. He finishes this course of chemo, takes a break, then another
course of chemo followed by a bone marrow transplant or another adjunct therapy.”

“How are you?”

I must have been tired, because an unfiltered answer just slipped out.

“I’m not ready for my dad to die.”

“No one is ever ready for that.”

“The problem is, I’m not sure I’m ready for anything. Everything you’re supposed to
do when you grow up. Move away from home, buy your own food and groceries, get married,
have children. Sometimes even the easy part of all that seems impossible to me. And
then I wonder what will happen ten, twenty years from now. Will I be a fifty-year-old
adolescent, completely alone, still sponging off whatever family I’ve got left?”

“People grow up at their own pace. And there are no rules for how you’re supposed
to live your life. Why don’t you cut yourself some slack? If I had such a well-stocked
pantry within spitting distance, I don’t know that I would do any grocery shopping
either—”

Max’s cell rang.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I have to take this. It’s a patient.”

He then stepped outside and had a brief conversation. When he returned, I realized
I had no idea what Max did for a living.

“Patient?” I asked. “Are you a doctor?”

“Yes. A psychiatrist.”

“I just spilled my guts to a shrink?” I shouted.

“Inside voice,” Claire said politely.

“We were having a conversation,” Max said.

“You tricked me.”

“It’s not like I charged you.”

I gathered my jacket, paperwork, and bag and marched over to the front door.

“I’m out of here. If you run out of Goldfish, there’s more in the pantry. Any questions,
call David or Maggie. Banana, play nice. Adios, Claire.”

Claire rushed to the door to hug my thighs good-bye. It kind of ruined my outraged
exit.

“See you around,” Max the shrink said cheerily.

1
. For a long but nonexhaustive list, see appendix.

T
hree hours later, when I returned to the hospital, Edward was still in Dad’s room.
The gift that Edward had given my father was an iPad, the perfect portable device
for stakeouts and extended hospital stays. While Edward showed my father a variety
of useful office apps, Dad showed Edward his favorite computer game, the one involving
some plants and some zombies. Edward quickly became an addict and played for the next
four hours. In between bouts with zombies, Dad and Edward bonded over a variety of
topics, including my bad sense of humor, cherry Jell-O, the overrated pastime of golf,
and my mother’s various charms. Apparently bygones happened quickly regarding the
whole small corporate takeover that Edward assisted me with.

My father shared his medical problems with Edward and Edward shared his professional
and medical problems with Dad, and by the time I arrived the two men had come up with
an ironclad plan to smoke out Edward’s crafty adversary.

Dad’s model for the plan was how he solved cases as a cop. “You start with the dead
body,” he said, “and work backward.”

“I don’t mean to rush to judgment, but that plan sucks,” I said.

“She must have been an impossible teenager,” Edward said.

“You have no idea,” Dad said.

“Starsky and Hutch, do you want to tell me what your master plan is?”

“We wait,” Edward said, as if he’d just revealed the blueprint to break into the vault
at the San Francisco Mint (back when the vault contained stuff worth breaking in for).

“Wait for what?”

Both men looked at me as if I were wearing a dunce cap.

“Too much booze,” my dad said.

“Not enough exercise,” Edward said.

I believe they were commenting on why I was slow to wrap my head around their brilliant
plan. I was too worn out from, well, the past thirty-five years, really, to endure
any more abuse. I departed without a word and went to the hospital cafeteria and ordered
French fries and cake (they didn’t have a liquor license).

I picked up a discarded newspaper and began reading two-day-old headlines. After I
devoured my entrée and began to deconstruct my dessert, a shadow blocked a rather
upbeat headline about a lone gunman whose plan to take out his direct superior in
the mailroom at a talent agency office (so he’d be next in line for the head of the
mailroom job) was foiled by his gun jamming.

“I thought I’d find you here,” the shadow said.

I had a mouthful of cake, so I didn’t respond. The shadow, otherwise known as Henry,
took that as an invitation to sit down. The cake was extremely dense and so my chewing
created an awkward silence that Henry thought needed filling. What it needed was milk.

“How’ve you been?” he asked.

Still working on that cake, my eyes said,
How did you find me here?

“Your father suggested you’d be in the cafeteria.”

My eyes then said,
How did you know my father was in the hospital?
My eyes were doing all the talking because I was still chewing.

“I ran into Maggie at the courthouse. She told me.”

I finally stopped chewing and asked about the file.

“Oh, here’s the file you asked for,” Henry said. “The names have been
redacted, but it’s pretty clear what happened. There was an office party at Bryan
Lincoln’s house. People were drunk. Some illegal drugs were involved. Two days after
the party, Naomi Clyde came into the Northern Station on Fillmore with her sister
Maureen and filed rape charges against Brad Gillman and Bryan Lincoln. There were
no witnesses. According to the victim, it happened in Bryan’s bedroom. They couldn’t
do a rape kit because she came forward after forty-eight hours. However, the DA believed
her and, after questioning both men, was ready to press charges, but Naomi recanted
when the prosecutor started to discuss with her what would happen if they went to
trial. Gillman and Lincoln lawyered up immediately and they were not going down without
a fight. That’s all I know,” Henry said. “I’m sure you’ll fill in the blanks.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I didn’t have any other safe topics of conversation, so I pretended to be reviewing
the file. Henry had already relayed the relevant information and yet he stayed put
until he got my attention.

I closed the file and said, “How have you been?”

“Okay. How have you been?” he asked again with a little more weight.

I was in no mood for a meaningful conversation.

“I’m in the best restaurant in town. How do you think I am? Sorry I didn’t save any
fries for you. But you didn’t tell me you were coming. Unannounced visits. This is
a relatively new habit of yours, no?”

“Yes. Because you stink at prearranged visits.”

“That’s debatable.”

“How’s your mom doing?”

“Not bad. Dad in here means a lot less cooking. The woman knows how to look on the
bright side. How’s, uh, your pregnant fiancée? I forgot her name. I’m sorry.”

“Annie. Annie Bloom. She’s good.”

There was a hiccup between the last two words, but it was none of my business and
Henry offered no further information. I’m pretty sure the best way to move on is not
to dig around in your ex-boyfriend’s personal life. I saved the metaphorical shovel
for other matters.